Global Thermonuclear War! (Feb, 1984)

A fast-action, high-strategy game with full color graphics, exciting animation, and realistic sound effects. Features include HAL™ speech synthesis (without special hardware), option to play as enemy or defender, and top ten score display.
Action begins with you at the controls of the Defense Command Computer. A random error causes the Computer to secure your nation’s defense for full scale nuclear attack. You have 30 seconds before the first ICBM is launched at your enemy’s capital. Decipher the secret code for aborting missile launch or prepare to fight World War III.

At launch, you discover the computer has deleted all targeting data for your weapons. Presented with NORAD style strategic displays, you watch the

trajectory of the missile track across the globe as you frantically retarget your weapon systems and prepare for your enemy’s attack. Do you strike before or after the enemy launches its first wave? Do you target for military, industrial, or civilian targets? Perhaps some combination? You watch enemy strikes against your homeland and the casualties grow to staggering proportions as you attempt to deter or conquer the enemy before you are completely destroyed. The war has begun and your nation’s destiny, even the destiny of the world, is in your hands.

LOL – you don’t know how right you are, Tim (unless you bought software then, too)! I remember one game I had my parents buy for me for my TRS-80 Color Computer; it was an RPG like Ultima – anyhow, the graphics in the advertisement looked good, but when I got the game, they were even better! The next issue of the magazine showed the new graphics. From what I learned much later about this game, they were basically advertising near “vaporware” – they had a beta-test version of the game in development, and took screencaps of that for the advertisement, but when I ordered it, it wasn’t ready (I remember that it took a while to get to my house; they claimed, when my parents called, that it was due to a postal strike in Canada, where the game was made – which was true, but likely not the complete reason for the delay). Things were dicey back then (heck, they’re dicey still)…

One of the first things the Dept. of Homeland Security did after they were formed was spend $175,000 to come up with same threat level color scheme that they used in “War Games.”
That’s when I knew they were taking our security ‘VERY seriously.’

Firebrand38 says: May 27, 20108:45 am

StanFlouride: You got a source for that assertion? Specifically the $175,000 price tag?

Dave, that satellite image of the Earth is the only shot we had of the entire planet at that time of this article. I can remember while working for an ad agency back in 1991-2, and needing a pic of the Earth, I called the JPL to ask them for a photo of the Earth that wasn’t focused on the Middle East (Gulf War going on then). This was the only one you could get through stock photo houses. The JPL person told me that that was the only one available showing the entire globe. It’s a well-used photo.

StanFlouride says: May 27, 20106:50 pm

Sorry FB- I just remember reading (and being stunned by) that number back in 2004 or 2003 but have no recollection where.

sweavo says: May 30, 20103:37 am

a strange game.

the only winning move is…

not to play.

Quarex says: December 9, 20108:54 pm

The best part is, at least according to an article in the magazine that would soon become Computer Gaming World at the time (Softline, confusingly called “St. Game” for the single issue in question, Volume 3 Number 4), this game was actually a scam, and the address given was for “a condominium in which none of the company principals ever resided.”